


shelter from the storm

by silkspectred



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Civil War Fix-It, Depression, Fix-It, Getting Back Together, Kidfic, M/M, Post-Break Up, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Technically lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-26 15:10:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13860327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkspectred/pseuds/silkspectred
Summary: Tony adopts a baby. Guess who's Majorly Fucked Up™ about it.





	shelter from the storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [krusca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krusca/gifts).



> This fic was inspired by krusca's super fantastic [art](https://twitter.com/artinggrace/status/961894795294593024) which was inspired by this super cute [video](https://twitter.com/raisingavalynn/status/961021660974538752) on Twitter. 
> 
> Thanks to [tones](https://twitter.com/ironmantrilogy) and [gem](https://twitter.com/infinityygem) for beta.
> 
> A couple of notes:
> 
> For the baby’s development I checked my pedagogy books from high school and crossed the info with more updated stuff on the internet. I also took inspiration from my personal experience with my niece and my brother, and my time working in a nursery school. I hope the fic feels if not realistic, at least somewhat believable.
> 
> On the other hand, the way Tony adopts the kid is definitely not realistic. I don’t know how it works in the US, but adoption in my country is exhausting (and not allowed for single parents anyway), and I confess I was too lazy to do research or work around Real Life. Just go along with it. It’s fic anyway! We can pretend adoption is a smooth and easy process who doesn’t suck the will to live out of anyone! <3
> 
> Also don’t look too closely at the timeline, but you can imagine Tony being a bit younger than he actually is in the MCU. Yes, I said younger. No, I wasn't kidnapped by the aliens and replaced by a lookalike. Promise :D

Tony Stark knows very well that when you have as many ideas as he does all the time, not all of them can be winners.

It’s just the way it is. It’s a probability thing, proportional to high quantity. If you have that many ideas, some of them are bound to be pretty fucking stupid.

So, yeah, there was this baby. New baby at the orphanage. Except the orphanage couldn’t possibly take her yet, because it was undergoing the renovations Tony was paying for. Space was extra tight for everyone, and there really wasn't any room for a new baby. Especially a newborn.

There were about five hundred other solutions to this issue that Tony could have found, if he wanted. Another orphanage. People who wanted to adopt. Countless others.

Except, _he_ wants to adopt.

Not that he has ever given this a lot of thought, or that any of it was particularly serious. It was like, whatever. Who knows. Maybe. Someday. Probably.

But at some point someone shoved this baby in his arms and Tony really, really, didn’t want to give her back. And to whom, anyway?

It feels nice, her weight in his arms. What has he been doing with his arms all this time? What’s even the point of having arms if you’re not holding a baby, a tiny baby that’s all yours, now that you’ve signed the paperwork?

Maria Stark. Little Maria Stark with big eyes just like her daddy.

Because he’s that now. He’s a dad. A father.

God, he’s gonna screw this up so much. He can’t possibly be a father. What the hell was he thinking?

Mentoring Peter, scolding him when he fucks up, talking with him about responsibility and powers and boys (because Peter talks a lot about boys, and something makes him think asking Tony for advice about boys is a good idea), that, is one thing.

This isn’t like that. She is five days old when he takes her home with him.

Five _days_.

Oh my god.

He breathes through his panic. It’s fine, most of the time. He barely has time to think about it at all, actually, because taking care of her is the priority.

She’s so tiny. She only has Tony.

So Tony gets his own shit together. For her.

***

The next few days are kind of a blur.

She poops a lot, Tony finds out. How is it possible for a baby so tiny to poop this much? Jesus Christ.

She also eats a lot, though. Well, drinks. Formula.

And sleep. She sleeps all the time, except not continuously. She wakes up about every three hours screaming, until Tony gives her her bottle and then lulls her back to sleep, his lullabies sounding suspiciously like AC/DC songs adapted for the purpose.

And yes, the waking up all the time is, you know, overall, to be expected. Because she’s a baby. But also, to be honest? What the fuck. Tony isn’t someone with the most impeccable sleep schedule, and yet he’s judging her, because there should be a limit to this kind of nonsense.

About a week in, Tony hasn’t showered in six days, he’s covered in more baby vomit that he wants to think about, and there’s something dark under one of his nails. He doesn’t want to know what it is because it’s not motor oil and if it’s not motor oil then the options here are all things that make Tony’s skin crawl.

The penthouse is a mess. The kitchen area is hopeless. He should burn the whole tower down, build a new one. But then he’d have to explain things to the superheroes currently using it as their base.

The New Avengers work well. Tony isn’t an active member of the team, but he’s proud of the work they’ve done. The world is safe in their hands. Even though no threat has been as bad as Thanos yet, he knows they’re more than capable to deal with whatever the universe throws at them.

Still, Tony hasn’t shared the good news with any of his friends, and if anyone asked him why, he wouldn’t know what to say.

He’s scared, maybe.

He looks around his bedroom, the corner with all of Maria’s things, and he feels like he’s failing at this. Spectacularly so.

Sure, he could get help. A nanny, or something. But he doesn’t want help. He wants to spend every waking minute with his baby because he has a baby now. He’s a father, and that’s his baby.

He drags the cradle into the bathroom. He leaves the door open so she won’t get too warm. He takes his much-needed shower.

Maria doesn’t cry.

Tony wraps a towel around his hips while he checks on her. She looks at him with her big eyes for a moment, then falls asleep.

Maybe he’s not doing so bad.

***

Rhodey is the first one to know, obviously. Then Pepper.

They don’t ask him if he’s gone crazy; they know him too well for that.

Rhodey helps him clean the kitchen while Maria sleeps, and Tony thinks that he should start doing things while Maria sleeps. Instead of just staring at her, terrified of SIDS.

The news gets out in a matter of days. Tony told Rhodey he could tell people, if he wanted.

All the Avengers—old and new—visit Tony; all of them want to hold Maria and play with her. Some look more doubtful than others at the idea of Tony being a father, or maybe those others are just better at hiding how they really feel. But in the end, they wish him well. Him and Maria, that is.

Only one person doesn’t come over. But Tony didn’t really expect him to.

***

He takes her out for a walk one day. It’s almost summer after all.

He wears sunglasses, a baseball cap, old clothes that don’t even fit him anymore.

And yet the news is all over Twitter in a matter of hours.

Goddammit.

***

He doesn’t really care. They can say whatever they want.

But seriously, Tony thinks while he angrily closes tabs on the holoscreen, some people are too disgusting to even _deserve_ getting sued.

***

Stark Industries actually gains points in the stock market over the next few days.

Go figure.

***

Maria is not even a month old yet when they have their first real bad day.

She doesn’t have a fever, but Tony has never been this worried in his life and he doesn’t know what to do.

She won’t stop crying.

He wraps her up in a blanket and steps into the elevator. He presses the button to the clinic. The pediatrician should still be there; the nursery for Stark Industries employees is still open. And he’s a Stark Industries employee. Technically.

It’s nothing serious, the doctor tells him. She just ate too fast and has a bit of a stomach ache.

She teaches Tony how to feed Maria in a way that keeps her from swallowing too much air, and Tony feels like the worst father ever.

She reassures him. “You’re doing fine, Mr. Stark.”

“Tony.”

“Tony. You’re doing fine. She’s clean, healthy, cared for. She has a sharp gaze. You stimulate her?”

“Yes. I talk to her all the time. We listen to music. I got her toys. I make her touch things, too. Safe things, with different textures. We have a book made with different fabrics.”

“You hold her?”

“Yes, as much as possible. And we play on the bed. I tickle her toes when I change her.”

“Great. She seems very attached to you. That’s good. Keep going. Bring her back in a month or so for her scheduled vaccines.”

“Of course,” he says.

Back in the elevator, Tony feels like a huge weight has been lifted from his chest.

He’s doing fine. They’re doing fine.

***

Finally, later that night, Maria is asleep.

Tony straightens out the living room and prepares for bed.

He’s just put his sleep clothes on when someone requests access to the penthouse from the elevator. Tony grants it before checking who it is.

“You got a _baby_?” Steve asks, as soon as the elevator opens.

Tony looks at him and presses the button to make the doors close. Pity he doesn’t have an actual door to slam in his face.

* * *

**Six years ago. Give or take.**

Steve came to the penthouse late at night. Tony was surprised by the visit, because Steve had been avoiding him since he’d gotten back from D.C.

He was nervous, twitchy. He even asked Tony for a drink.

He sat on Tony’s couch like a man on the electric chair, and said, “I have to tell you something important about Bucky and your parents’ death.”

Tony said, “Okay.”

***

They talked until the first rays of sunshine started creeping into the room through the glass wall.

“I’d better get going,” Steve said, walking towards the elevator.

“Wait,” Tony said. “Why did you tell me?”

Steve seemed to weigh his words. “Because it was the right thing to do,” he replied, looking down at his shoes. “Because I’m in love with you,” he added, quietly.

Tony kissed him.

***

They never talked about it. They simply made space in their life for the other.

Suddenly, Steve’s toothbrush was in Tony’s bathroom, and Tony stared at it for half an hour one night, wondering how and when that happened.

And it wasn’t just that.

Steve clothes were in Tony’s closet. The book Steve was reading was on the other bedside table, the one Tony didn’t use. Sometimes, Tony would come back from the workshop late at night to find that Steve had left his sketchbook and pencils on the kitchen counter and had gone to bed.

In Tony’s bed. That was now their bed.

Tony had stopped paying attention for a second and all of a sudden, just like that, he was Steve Rogers’ boyfriend.

***

They were the happiest eight months of Tony’s life.

***

Tony was brushing his teeth when Steve asked, “Will you marry me?”

Tony didn’t even choke on the toothpaste. “Yes,” he said.

***

The next day Thaddeus Ross came to Avengers tower with the Sokovia Accords.

***

Tony hadn’t seen it coming. He’d been distracted by Steve sleeping with him every night, by Steve’s lips on his, by Steve, Steve, Steve.

He’d been distracted. He’d been in love.

***

They never actually broke up. Tony figured the punches (and the half-destroyed Leipzig airport) cleared things up enough on their own.

***

Tony stayed in the penthouse. He wasn’t an Avenger anymore, but he kept funding the team and upgrading their equipment. Sometimes, he was Iron Man.

He wasn’t ready to give that up altogether. Not just yet.

Steve moved back to Brooklyn. He found a nice apartment close to Bucky and Nat’s.

He came to retrieve his things one day while Tony wasn’t home. Like a thief.

Tony stared at the empty drawer in his dresser and tried to recall what was in there before Steve’s underwear.

He couldn’t remember for the life of him.

***

They saw each other again two years later, when the sky was dark and some purple alien fucker that looked like a used condom wanted to destroy the planet.

They were civil for the sake of the battle.

After, when the Avengers had secured whatever victory was possible, they went back to being strangers.

Well, maybe not strangers. They saw each other once in a while. Reluctantly, and they didn’t speak to each other if it could be avoided, but still.

They were civil.

***

Steve was Bucky’s best man.

Natasha asked Tony to walk her to the altar.

They didn’t say a word to each other the whole day.

Tony counted it as civil.

* * *

**Now**

Tony presses the button again, and the doors open to reveal a sad Steve, which Tony didn’t expect.

Angry, pissed off, bitter—sure.

But sad? Tony can’t deal with sad.

“Hi,” he says. “Sorry about… that,” he adds, pointing at the elevator doors.

“Hi,” Steve replies, stepping into the room. He looks around himself curiously, trying to spot what changed since the last time he was here.

Lots of things changed. Most of all, Tony.

“Sorry,” he says, lifting a hand to scratch the nape of his neck. He’s nervous. It’s weird. “I heard the news and… But I didn’t know if you… Sorry it took me so long to come visit.”

“That’s… that’s fine,” Tony mumbles, feeling like he didn’t study his part for this scene, so he has no idea what to say.

“So, I… I hope you’re okay. That she… that she’s okay.”

“We are.”

Steve looks at him. He presses his lips together, but his jaw doesn’t do that horrible thing it does when he’s truly displeased.

“Could I maybe—it’s okay if you don’t want me to but—could I maybe… see her?”

“Yes,” Tony says. He doesn’t need to think about it. Of course Steve can see Maria. “Follow me.” He leads Steve in the bedroom. “She just fell asleep.”

Tony doesn’t know how he expected Steve to react, but it’s not… this.

He looks down at her, and his eyes widen. He touches his forehead, almost confused. He says, “Oh my god,” under his breath, then covers his mouth with his hand for a moment.

“St—”

“She’s so tiny,” he says, quietly. He seems scared he’s going to wake her up.  

“She is,” Tony agrees.

He bends down to look closer at her for a minute, then locks his gaze with Tony’s without saying anything for a while.

“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispers in the end. “Person, I mean. She’s a person.”

“Thank you,” Tony says, then thinks about it. “I mean, I didn’t really do anything. I didn’t participate in the process of making her, but—”

But she’s his. She’s his like nothing else has ever been.

Tony feels it so deep inside himself, this sense of belonging. She’s his and he’s hers in a way he didn’t think was possible.

Steve looks down at Maria again. He lifts a hand to cover his chest, the movement hesitant and abrupt at the same time.

“I…” he says.

Then, Steve makes a sound.

Tony doesn’t know how to describe it. It’s like he just got the wind knocked out of him the moment he was starting to cry. Tony really doesn’t know what to do.

“Steve—”

“I’m sor—”

“Sir, I apologize for the interruption. There seem to be a problem in your workshop.”

“What kind of problem, J?”

“Experiment 2187.6B, sir.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed. It’s been left unattended since the arrival of Miss Maria.”

“Call Happy.”

“Already done, sir. Mr. Hogan is on his way to secure the floor.”

“I’m going downstairs now.”

“Very well. I suggest extra caution in your proceedings, sir.”

“Don’t worry, J.”

“I always do, sir.”

Tony puts on his shoes in a hurry. Then, he stops in his tracks and looks at Steve.

“Go,” he says. “I’ll stay with her.”

“Thank you.”

“Go!”

And Tony goes.

***

Tony comes back to the penthouse about an hour later, tired and dirty and with a burn on the back of his arm. But what he sees when he enters his living room makes it all go away.

Steve has Maria in his arms. One arm, actually. His big bicep supports her head just right. He’s pointing at the buildings outside through the glass wall and talking to her, explaining to her what this or that skyscraper is, what’s inside of them.

“Oh. You’re back,” he says, awkward. “Sorry, I... She was crying, so… It seemed wrong to just...” He waits for Tony to come closer, and he passes Maria to him, careful not to touch him. He could hold her up with just one of his hands. “I’m sorry,” he repeats.

“It’s alright,” Tony says, and kisses Maria’s forehead. He’s dirty; he should clean up, but he’s missed her. It’s only been an hour and he’s missed his baby.

“Oh...” Steve says, looking at Maria, tone quiet and full of awe. “Would you look at that.” He sounds out of breath.

“What?” Tony asks, and looks down at Maria again, worried.

“Nothing, you just... you kissed her and she smiled.”

That can’t be right. It’s too early.

She has at least two weeks to go for an actual social smile.

Tony kisses her forehead again.

“There!” Steve says, excited now.

Tony shifts Maria in his arms, taking her from under her armpits, careful that she doesn’t hurt her neck. He kisses her cheek this time, with more decision, making a little sound with his lips too.

She smiles.

Maybe it’s not actually a smile, maybe it’s just an involuntary reflex, but. She smiled.

Tony looks at Steve, and joy is erased right away from his face the moment their eyes meet.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says again, and starts walking towards the elevator. He’s leaving.

“Steve, wait,” Tony says, but it’s too late. Steve has already pressed the button. “Thank you,” Tony hastens to say.

“Oh, don’t... don’t mention it,” Steve says, while the doors close between them.

***

A few weeks later, Steve comes by again.

“Hello,” he says, then asks about Maria.

Tony tells him about her progress. She’s started making cooing sounds and has a little more control over her limbs. Also, Tony is now convinced she really learned how to smile.

Steve seems very interested in this. Tony gets the impression he’s read a book on the development of newborns, or looked something up on the internet. He can’t explain Steve’s comments in any other way.

“What brings you here?” Tony wants to know after a while.

“I had lunch with Carol,” Steve says. Right, Tony thinks. People who don’t have kids have time to have lunch with their friends on a Wednesday. He remembers that.

Okay, he’s being a little tragic. He has a baby; he’s not dead.

“I met Rhodey downstairs and he said you were home, so I thought...”

Still. It’s not like Tony has had time to go out a lot lately. Or the reason. Except to take Maria on a walk in Bryant Park. When he can avoid the paparazzi.

“Also I wanted...” Steve can’t continue for a moment. He looks nervous again, like this is a test or something. He reaches into his pocket. “I wanted to give you this. Maria, I mean. I wanted to give Maria this.”

It’s a humpback whale. Blue and white. Crochet.

“I made it,” Steve says.

Right. That’s a thing Steve does. Tony still has a couple of ties from back when—

“I hope it’s soft enough for her. I wanted to use buttons for the eyes but then I thought, what if they come off and she… So I got some black thread and—”

“A whale,” Tony says, dumbfounded.

“You... you like whales, right? Like... like in that Star Trek movie.”

“Did you make this for me or for her?” Tony asks, but his tone isn’t at all confrontational. He doesn’t notice that it might be until after the words have left his mouth.

“For her, for her,” Steve says. “But I figured, since she’s your kid and everything... she’s gonna like whales too.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t...”

“May I...”

“Of course.”

Steve puts the toy in Maria’s crib. She squeezes it, grips it tight with her tiny hand. She presses her open mouth against it, leaving a trail of saliva.

“She likes—“

“I wanted to say,” Steve starts, interrupting Tony. He swallows, scratches his forehead. He pushes his hair back. “I wanted to...”

He rests a hand on Tony’s shoulder, then looks at it as though he has no clue how it got there. He takes it away, quick, like he can pretend he never did it.

It’s the first time they touched in six years.

“Okay, I’d better... sorry, I, uh... thank you—“

“‘Thank you’?”

“Yes, I... I mean... Goodbye, Tony,” he says in the end, resolute.

“Wait!” Tony says, too loud, and takes Steve’s wrist in his hand before he can run away like the last time.

It’s an awful moment, the one that comes next. The possibilities are split in two even halves, which isn’t as common as people might think. Either Steve lets Tony touch him, or he jerks his arm away.

It figures that what Steve does is something entirely different. But then again, he could always surprise Tony.

He cups Tony’s face with his hand. Tony had forgotten how warm Steve’s hands are.

“I wanted to say... that you’re a good father. And I’m, I’m, I’m happy for you. Okay.”

“Uh... Okay. Thanks.”

Steve lets his arm drop to his side. His chest heaves with a sigh. He turns away, heading for the door again.

“Steve!” Tony calls. “Don’t… don’t go.”

“Tony—”

“Come sit with me? For a minute.”

Steve looks at him, then down at the floor. He nods, very slow.

They sit on the couch, like that night of so many years ago.

“I’m glad you came back. Maria likes you,” Tony starts, but it’s not what he wants to say.

Steve doesn’t reply.  God, why is this so hard?

“Steve, listen. I wanted to apologize for—”

“No, Tony, please, it was my fault—”

“No, I just wouldn’t listen, and—”

“I didn’t listen either—”

“I just—”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too. I’m sorry too.”

Silence falls between them. Steve shifts on the couch, reaches to the coffee table to take one of Maria’s toys. He presses a button on it, and it makes a cat’s call. He presses another, and it’s the cow’s.

He smiles to himself. Tony hasn’t seen that smile in forever.

“You know,” Steve says, “back then, I thought we’d… that we would…” He sighs. “Nevermind.”

Tony looks at the side of Steve’s face, now serious, and realizes that Steve is, most of all, lonely.

“Steve, how… how have you been doing?”

“How do you mean?”

“Like, your day, what do you do, usually?”

“Oh, I… I don’t know. I run. I read. Sometimes I watch a movie. Hang out with Bucky and Sam on Thursday night. Play tennis with Sharon every other Sunday.”

“You don’t draw anymore?”

“I… not really.”

That’s strange. Steve used to draw all the time, before.

“Listen, if you… if you wanna come by more, I… I’d be okay with that.”

Steve’s head snaps up so fast Tony almost worries he hurt himself.

“You, uh… you really wouldn’t mind?”

“No. I could use the company. Maybe even the help,” Tony says, and Steve’s back relaxes. “I wouldn’t mind a friend. If that’s… alright with you.”

Steve smiles, sweet. “Of course, Tony. That’d make me… very happy.”

***

Steve comes back almost every day. It’s fantastic.

He adores Maria. He plays with her, talks to her, learns how to feed her. Tony teaches him how to change her diaper and how to clean her up properly. Steve is scared at first, especially when Tony tells him he has to hold her still to dress her.

“What if I hurt her?” he asks Tony, who is slipping Maria back into her onesie. He wanted Steve to try, but Steve insisted on watching Tony do it just one more time.

“You won’t, Steve. You know how to dose your strength,” he says, throwing away Maria’s dirty diaper. He doesn’t think about the time Steve punched him. He doesn’t think about how he punched back just as hard. “Besides,” he adds, “I trust you.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. He stares at Tony for a little while, then looks at Maria, down on the changing table. She squeezes his finger with both hands.  

He starts singing one of his sad, old Irish songs.

***

Maria, on her end, loves Steve.

She starts recognizing his face and his voice pretty soon, and she interacts with him easily. She never cries when Tony leaves her alone with Steve for a couple of hours to get some work done in the workshop, check on a project, fix a piece of Avengers equipment.

Tony lucked out; she’s such an easy kid. She sleeps through most of the night already, eats at regular times,  holds herself up a little better.

She barely cries when she gets her shots.

“She’s brave,” Steve says when Tony tells him. “Like her dad.”

***

One afternoon, Tony comes back from the workshop to find Steve asleep on the couch. Maria is next to him, also asleep, held in place by Steve’s arm around her. He’s still clutching the crochet whale, his nose in Maria’s hair.

Something makes Tony’s heart sting.

***

“Dude,” Rhodey says after running into Steve for the third time in three days. “What the hell’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Tony says.

***

Steve was supposed to leave an hour ago, before dinner. But then Maria needed to be changed while Tony was stuck in the longest phone call with the biggest asshole in the board of directors.

“I can go,” Steve mouths at him after adjusting Maria in her cradle while Tony pretends to listen to the phone.

“No, wait,” he whispers, “I need to talk to you.”

When he finally hangs up, Tony says, “I was thinking Thai. Your usual?”

“Yes,” Steve says, voice cracking a bit around the word.

“J?”

“Thirty minutes, sir.”

“Perfect.”

They eat sitting at the kitchen peninsula, the soft melody coming from Maria’s mobile toy as their background music.

“I wanted to thank you,” Tony says. “For, you know, helping, and… Just, just thank you.”

“No problem,” Steve says, and he sounds like he just ran a couple of marathons back to back. “Thank _you_ for letting me hang around.”

He smiles. Tony smiles back.

“You know,” Steve says when they’re almost finished eating, “sometimes I feel like… like they just throw us away when they’re done with us. And it doesn’t matter if we don’t know why we should get up in the morning anymore.”

Tony doesn’t know exactly who the _they_ is supposed to be, but at the same time he knows perfectly well.  

***

“I’m awake!” Steve says all of a sudden in the middle of the night, sitting bolt upright and waking Tony up.

Ugh. They fell asleep on the bed while they were playing with Maria. She’s still between them, eyes open now.

“Daa,” she says, while Steve scrambles to his feet and almost trips over Maria’s toys strewn all over the carpet.

“Steve.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll, I’ll go. I’ll be out of your—”

“Steve. Sleep.”

They look at each other. A beat, two. Steve’s eyes are so sharp in the darkness of the room.

“Okay,” he says softly, and takes off his jeans. He waits for Tony to settle under the covers with Maria, then crawls into bed too.

Tony squeezes his hand for a moment over the mattress, Maria’s little feet brushing their wrists.

“Don’t worry. Sleep.”

***

They have breakfast together in the morning.

Steve’s t-shirt is rumpled and his hair is all ruffled up on the side.

Tony is running late for his meeting.

“Ugh, I need to brush my teeth,” Steve says.

“There’s a spare tooth—”

“Yeah. I remember. Thank you.”

Tony nods. Steve holds Maria up while Tony is leaving, pitches his voice a bit higher—half talking to her, half pretending to voice her thoughts. “Say bye to Dad, Maria. Bye, Dad. Love you.”

 _Love you too_ , Tony thinks.

***

There are two toothbrushes in the cup, Tony notices that night, and he’s the opposite of surprised.

Still. It happened again.

Goddammit.

***

When Maria is a little over six months old, Tony makes her eat something that’s not formula.

She loves carrots and pears, but she’s not that convinced about apples.

***

Dropping things on the floor becomes her favorite pastime. She laughs in delight hearing how different things produce different sounds.

Also, peek-a-boo is all the rage these days in the penthouse of Avengers tower.

Which isn’t something Tony ever expected to think, but that’s life.

***

Steve starts drawing again.

His first sketches are of that time Tony kissed Maria’s forehead and she—maybe—smiled.

Tony’s gonna have them framed.

***

She’s teething. And she wants the entire tower to know just how pissed off she is about that.

Tony barely gets any sleep for an entire week.

***

Steve kisses him one night before bed.

Tony sees it coming a mile away. Steve steels himself, straightens his shoulders, sighs. He says, “Maybe I’m gonna fuck this up all over again, but…” then goes for it.

Tony kisses back.

“I…”

“Don’t say anything,” Tony says, and Steve kisses him again.

***

Two months pass without them being able to do anything more than kissing.

In the end, Tony leaves Maria in the play cot in the living room. She is asleep, but if she wakes up he figures she can spend a few minutes by herself in a safe space.

Still, he says, “J?”

“Yes, sir,” he replies.

He’ll call Tony if there’s any trouble.

***

They’re quick about it, but not to the point of rushing things.

“I love you,” Steve groans against Tony’s lips while he comes, quietly.

The stretch burns a bit. They should have used more lube; Tony hasn’t done this in a long time.

They haven’t done this in a long time.

“I love you too. Steve. I love you too.”

***

Tony checks on Maria while he’s still pressing a wet towel to his ass.

He’s a terrible father. He’s a terrible, terrible father.

“Sir, Miss Maria woke up about ten minutes ago. She didn’t seem to have any need for your presence, so I thought it best not to disturb you and Captain Rogers.”

“Thank you, J,” Tony says, bending over the play cot so Maria can notice him.

“Daa,” she says, looking up from her Mulan book to stare at him like he’s stupid.

 _Valid point_ , Tony thinks.

***

They have apple pie for Maria’s first birthday.

Steve makes it. It’s his mother’s old recipe.

They wait for it to cool, and then cut a tiny slice into little pieces. Maria brings them to her mouth all by herself.

***

Maria doesn’t talk. She’s eighteen months old and she doesn’t talk.

She mimics all the animals’ calls when you ask her; she knows people’s names and can point at them in the room when Tony calls them for her; she even points to herself when he asks her _where’s Maria?_ She recognizes objects by their names; she understand instructions; she shouts and dances when there’s music.

But she doesn’t talk.

“Do you guys talk to her in another language, besides English?” the pediatrician asks them when they voice their concern to her.

“Of course,” Tony says, “I talk to her in Spanish, and Italian, and Dari. Steve?”

“Just French and German. And the songs in Irish. Also, I think I’ve heard Rhodey talk to her in Urdu once.”

“Okay. She’s trying to learn seven and a half languages at once. Give her time.”

***

A couple of months later Maria never shuts up. Every time it’s a language lottery. Who knows what the fuck she’s speaking? Not Tony. But they’ll figure it out. She’ll figure it out.

“She’s gonna be a genius, I already know it,” Steve says. “She’s your kid, after all.”

“ _Our_ kid,” Tony says. “Maria is our kid.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Bob Dylan's song of the same name.
> 
> I imagine the crochet humpback whale to look something like [this](https://www.1dogwoof.com/humpback-whale-crochet-pattern/), although at least half in size. It's so cute! I love whales <3
> 
> on [tumblr](http://silkspectred.tumblr.com/post/171661317825/shelter-from-the-storm-silkspectred-52k)
> 
> on [twitter](https://twitter.com/starkspectre/status/971780022120960000)


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